Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/145

THE COMMONSENSE OF MR. ARNOLD BENNETT That Mr. Bennett could have given us a better book than The Card ; ^ that much of it is frankly just frivolling and more of it almost rowdily rollicking ; that though it deals once again v^ith those confounded Potteries it has nothing of the dark dignity of Clay- hanger — these are bound to be some of the things our Cockney cousins will be printing as they solemnly decide that The Card, like The Grand Babylon Hotel and How to Live on Twenty-four Hours a Day, is another of the things they must try to overlook for the sake of The Old Wives' Tale. There is a crumb or two of reason on their side ; The Card is a sort of skylarking, a Mei^y Wives of Windsor, bearing much the same relation to Clayhanger that snap does to responsible bridge or Cinquevalli's cue-play to Biggie's ; but to regard it as a giddy aberration, an indiscretion, is to get a wholly wrong idea about both it and its maker. The Card is genuine Bennett : it flings a happy light on the whole fascinating Bennett pro- blem ; and indeed the really fundamental thing to say about it, comparatively, is not that it ought to have Clayhanger s qualities, but that Clayhanger would be better if it had some of the qualities of The Card. But that is a fact not easily seen in a London fog. ' The Card. By Arnold Bennett (Methuen, 1911). U9